Amid Fiscal Stalemate, How to Handle Tax Rate Uncertainty

So we’re left with no idea how much we’ll be paying in federal income taxes in 2013, and a wide range of possibilities for taxes on investments and estates and tax deductions for mortgage interest and charitable contributions. Plenty of people will spend the next several days feeling helpless, with one eye on the stock market and the other on Washington. For all the uncertainty, though, we...

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Deadly storm moves through Northeast, dumping snow, sleet, rain

A deadly winter storm that dropped twisters onto the South on Christmas Day raced across the Northeast on Thursday, and bringing...

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Freestyle BMX on the Moon? No, Something Very Much Like It

Competitors explore the moonscape of Campo de Piedra Pomes, an Argentine pumice field. Photo: Gustavo Cherro/Red Bull Content PoolRed Bull has kicked loose a bunch of pics and video from its insane Ramparanoia, an invitation-only freestyle and dirt-jumping competition held in one of the coolest places ever — a pumice field 13,000 feet above sea level.The Austrian energy drink juggernaut threw...

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Christmas box-office haul paces Hollywood for record year

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A strong Christmas-day box office performance by musical “Les Miserables” and western “Django Unchained” put Hollywood on pace to set an all-time box office record with $ 10.8 billion in annual revenue, box-office tracker Hollywood.com said on Wednesday.Universal Pictures‘ star-studded “Les Miserables” took in a weekday Christmas record of $ 18.2 million in the United States...

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Home Tech: Devices to Monitor Physical Activity and Food Intake

STEP LIVELY Fitbit One pedometer clips onto your belt or pocket to record activity. WHEN I received the results of a routine cholesterol test this summer, I was certain there had been some kind of mistake. I’m young, unstressed and healthy, or so I imagined. I work out, too, and most impartial observers — and some partial ones — would describe me as lean. Plus, I eat a nutritious diet, I swear. So...

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Obama, Democrats, winning over public on 'fiscal cliff'

WASHINGTON -- Americans are increasingly doubtful that Congress and the White House will reach a budget deal as the deadline to the "fiscal cliff" approaches, according...

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Wired Science Space Photo of the Day: Really Hot Stars

This unique image shows AB7, one of the highest excitation nebulae in the Magellanic Clouds (MCs), two satellite galaxies of our own Milky Way. AB7 is a binary star, consisting of one WR-star — highly evolved massive star - and a mid-age massive companion of spectral type O. These exceptional stars have very strong stellar winds: they continuously eject energetic particles...

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Britain’s royal family attends Christmas services

LONDON (AP) — Britain‘s royal family is attending Christmas Day church services — with a few notable absences.Wearing a turquoise coat and matching hat, Queen Elizabeth II arrived at St. Mary Magdelene Church on her sprawling Sandringham estate in Norfolk. She was accompanied in a Bentley by granddaughters Beatrice and Eugenie.Her husband, Prince Philip, walked from the house to the church with other...

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Op-Ed Contributor: Our Failed Approach to Schizophrenia

TOO many pendulums have swung in the wrong directions in the United States. I am not referring only to the bizarre all-or-nothing rhetoric around gun control, but to the swing in mental health care over the past 50 years: too little institutionalizing of teenagers and young adults (particularly men, generally more prone to violence) who have had a recent onset of schizophrenia; too little education...

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Jobs Compete With College in Montana Oil Country

Matthew Staver for The New York TimesShay Findlay is 19 and earns $40,000 a year at his second job since graduating from high school. SIDNEY, Mont. — For most high school seniors, a college degree is the surest path to a decent job and a stable future. But here in oil country, some teenagers are choosing the oil fields over universities, forgoing higher education for jobs with salaries that can start...

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